Since the 19th century CE, numerous attempts have been made to identify the mythical river Saraswati of the Vedas with physical rivers. Many think that the Vedic Saraswati once flowed east of the
Indus (Sindhu) river. Scientists, geologists as well as scholars have identified the Saraswati with many present-day or now-defunct rivers. Two theories are popular in the attempts to identify the Saraswati. Several scholars have identified the river with the present-day
Ghaggar-Hakra River or dried up part of it, which is located in modern-day Northwestern India and Pakistan. The identification with the Ghaggar-Hakra system took on new significance in the early 21st century, suggesting an earlier dating of the Rigveda, and renaming the Indus Valley Civilisation as the "Saraswati culture", the "Saraswati Civilisation", the "Indus-Saraswati Civilisation" or the "Sindhu-Saraswati Civilisation," but also as "whose mother is the Sindhu", which would indicate that the Saraswati is here a tributary of the Indus. •
RV 7.95.1–2, describes the Saraswati as flowing to the
samudra, a word now usually translated as "ocean," but which could also mean "lake." • Verses in
RV 6.61 indicate that the Saraswati river originated in the hills or mountains (giri), where she "burst with her strong waves the ridges of the hills (giri)". It is a matter of interpretation whether this refers only to the Himalayan
foothills, where the present-day Saraswati (Sarsuti) river flows, or to higher mountains. and the riverbed of the Ghaggar Hagra. The Rigveda was composed during the latter part of the late Harappan period, and according to Shaffer, the reason for the predominance of the Saraswati in the
Rigveda is the
late Harappan (1900-1300 BCE) population shift eastwards to
Haryana. The supposed paleochannel of the Hakra is actually a paleochannel of the Sutlej, flowing into the
Nara river bed, presently a
delta channel c.q. paleochannel of the
Indus River. At least 10,000 years ago, well before the rise of the Harappan civilization, the sutlej diverted its course, leaving the Ghaggar-Hakra as a monsoon-fed river. Khonde et al. (2017) confirm that the Great Rann of Kutch received sediments from a different source than the Indus, but this source stopped supplying sediments after ca. 10,000 years ago. Likewise, Dave et al. (2019) state that "[o]ur results disprove the proposed link between ancient settlements and large rivers from the Himalayas and indicate that the major palaeo-fluvial system traversing through this region ceased long before the establishment of the Harappan civilisation." According to Chaudhri et al. (2021) "the Saraswati River used to flow from the glaciated peaks of the Himalaya to the Arabian sea," and an "enormous amount of water was flowing through this channel network until BCE 11,147." This study suggests that the Saraswati was initially glacier-fed, weakened as glaciers shrank after 4000 BCE, relied mostly on rain until around 2000 years ago, and fully dried up by 1402 CE.
IVC and diminishing of the monsoons . See Sameer et al. (2018) for a more detailed map. Many
Indus Valley Civilisation (Harrapan Civilisation) sites are found on the banks of and in the proximity of the Ghaggar-Hakra fluvial system, due to the "high monsoon rainfall" which fed the Ghaggar-Hakra in Mature Harappan Times. Giosan et al., in their study
Fluvial landscapes of the Harappan civilisation, make clear that the Ghaggar-Hakra fluvial system was not a large glacier-fed Himalayan river, but a monsoonal-fed river. They concluded that the Indus Valley Civilisation prospered when the monsoons that fed the rivers diminished around 5,000 years ago. When the monsoons, which fed the rivers that supported the civilisation, further diminished and the rivers dried out as a result, the IVC declined some 4000 years ago. This in particular effected the Ghaggar-Hakra system, which became an
intermittent river and was largely abandoned. Localized Late IVC-settlements are found eastwards, toward the more humid regions of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, where the decentralised late Harappan phase took place. The same widespread aridification in the third millennium BCE also led to water shortages and ecological changes in the Eurasian steppes, leading to a change of vegetation, triggering "higher mobility and transition to nomadic cattle breeding," These migrations eventually resulted in the Indo-Aryan migrations into South Asia. despite the fact that it had already dried-up and become a small seasonal river before Vedic times. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a number of scholars, archaeologists, and geologists have attempted to identify the Vedic Saraswati River with the
Ghaggar-Hakra River, such as
Christian Lassen (1800-1876),
Max Müller (1823-1900),
Marc Aurel Stein (1862–1943), and Jane Macintosh.
Michel Danino, a
Hindutva author who has been criticised for
historical negationism and
sectarian scholarship, notes that "the 1500 km-long bed of the Saraswati" was "rediscovered" in the 19th century. According to Danino, "most Indologists" were convinced in the 19th century that "the bed of the Ghaggar-Hakra was the relic of the Saraswati." Some other recent archaeologists and geologists, such as Philip and Virdi (2006) and K.S. Valdiya (2013) have also attempted to identify the Saraswati with the Ghaggar. According to Gregory Possehl, "Linguistic, archaeological, and historical data show that the Saraswati of the Vedas is the modern Ghaggar or Hakra." According to R.U.S. Prasad, "we [...] find a considerable body of opinions [sic] among the scholars, archaeologists and geologists, who hold that the Saraswati originated in the
Sivalik hills [...] and descended through
Adi Badri, situated in the foothills of the Shivaliks, to the plains [...] and finally
debouched herself into the Arabian sea at the
Rann of Kutch." According to Valdiya, "it is plausible to conclude that once upon a time the Ghagghar was known as "Sarsutī"," which is "a corruption of "Saraswati"," because "at Sirsā on the bank of the Ghagghar stands a fortress called "Sarsutī". Now in derelict condition, this fortress of antiquity celebrates and honours the river
Sarsutī."
Textual and historical objections Ashoke Mukherjee (2001) is critical of the attempts to identify the Rigvedic Saraswati. Mukherjee notes the peculiarity that rivers like the Indus (Sindu) preserved their name for thousands of years, and a number of Indian rivers have been named Sarasvati, reflecting the religious significance of this river, yet "the original Sarasvati [was renamed] into a desanscritized drab title of local dialect?" Mukherjee further notes that many historians and archaeologists, both Indian and foreign, noted that the word "Saraswati" (literally "being full of water") is not a
noun, a specific "thing," and concluded that "Saraswati" is initially used by the Rigvedic people as an adjective to the Indus as a large river and later evolved into a "noun." The popular memory of a mighty may have developed into a myth when the Vedic people migrated further eastwards . Mukherjee concludes that the Vedic poets had not seen the palaeo-Saraswati, and that what they described in the Vedic verses refers to something else. He also suggests that in the post-Vedic and Puranic tradition the "disappearance" of Saraswati, which to refers to "[going] under [the] ground in the sands", was created as a complementary myth to explain the visible non-existence of the river.
Romila Thapar terms the identification controversial and dismisses it, noticing that the descriptions of Saraswati flowing through the high mountains does not tally with Ghaggar's course and suggests that Saraswati is Haraxvati of Afghanistan. Rajesh Kocchar (1999), after a detailed analysis of the Vedic texts and the geological environments of the rivers, concludes that there may be two Saraswati rivers mentioned in the Rigveda. The early Rigvedic Saraswati, which he calls
Naditama Saraswati, is described in Suktas 2.41, 7.36, etc. of the family books of the Rigveda, and drains into a
samudra. However, according to Rajesh, the description of the
Naditama Saraswati in the Rigveda indicates that any long river which flows from the mountains to the sea, receiving tributaries along the way, can fit the general description of the Saraswati River. Rajesh presents arguments in his work that the
Helmand River in Afghanistan could be identified with the earlier Saraswati River, citing reasons such as similarities between the description of Saraswati in the Rigveda and the description of the Helmand, also known as Haetumant, in the Avesta. Rajesh further rejects the identification of the older Saraswati with the Ghaggar, citing that western archaeological sites in Sind are older than eastern archaeological sites of the Ghaggar, suggesting an eastward migration of the bearers of the Rigvedic culture to the western
Ganga plain. According to him, the Saraswati by this time had become an underground river, and the name was transferred to the
Ghaggar, which disappeared in the desert. Romila Thapar (2004) declares the identification of the Ghaggar with the Saraswati controversial. Furthermore, the early references to the Saraswati could be the Haraxvati plain in Afghanistan. The identification with the Ghaggar is problematic, as the Saraswati is said to cut its way through high mountains, which is not the landscape of the Ghaggar. Some see these descriptions as a mighty river as evidence for an earlier dating of the Rigveda, identifying the Vedic culture with the Harappan culture, which flourished at the time that the Gaggar-Hakra had not dried up, and rejecting the
Indo-Aryan migrations theory, which postulates a migration at 1500 BCE.
Michel Danino places the composition of the Vedas therefore in the third millennium BCE, a millennium earlier than the conventional dates. Danino notes that accepting the Rigveda accounts as a mighty river as factual descriptions, and dating the drying up late in the third millennium, are incompatible. According to Danino, this suggests that the Vedic people were present in northern India in the third millennium BCE, a conclusion which is controversial amongst professional archaeologists. Danino states that there is an absence of "any intrusive material culture in the Northwest during the second millennium BCE," a biological continuity in the skeletal remains, and a cultural continuity. Danino then states that if the "testimony of the Saraswati is added to this, the simplest and most natural conclusion is that the Vedic culture was present in the region in the third millennium." Danino acknowledges that this asks for "studying its tentacular ramifications into linguistics, archaeoastronomy, anthropology and genetics, besides a few other fields."
Identification with the Indus Valley Civilisation The Indus Valley Civilisation is sometimes called the "Saraswati culture", "Saraswati Civilization", "Indus Ghaggar-Hakra civilisation," "Indus-Saraswati Civilization," or "Sindhu-Saraswati Civilization" by
Hindutva revisionists subscribing to the theory of
Indigenous Aryanism. The terms refer to the Saraswati river mentioned in the Vedas, and equate the Vedic culture with the Indus Valley Civilisation. In this view, the Harappan civilisation flourished predominantly on the banks of the Ghaggar-Hakra, not the Indus. Hetalben Sindhav notes that claims of a large number of Ghaggar-Hakra sites are politically motivated and exaggerated. While the Indus remained an active river, the Ghaggar-Hakra dried-up, leaving many sites undisturbed. Sidhav further notes that the Ghaggar-Hakra was a tributary of the Indus, so the proposed Saraswati nomenclatura is redundant. According to archaeologist Shereen Ratnagar, many Ghaggar-Hakra sites in India are actually those of local cultures; some sites display contact with Harappan civilization, but only a few are fully developed Harappan ones. Moreover, around 90% of the
Indus script seals and inscribed objects discovered were found at sites in Pakistan along the Indus river, while other places accounting only for the remaining 10%.
Revival In 2015,
Reuters reported that "members of the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a
right-wing Hindutva paramilitary organisation, know that proof of the physical existence of the Vedic river would bolster their concept of a golden age of Hindu Indian Subcontinent." The
Bharatiya Janata Party Government had therefore ordered archaeologists to search for the river. According to the government of Indian state of
Haryana, research and satellite imagery of the region has
confirmed to have found the lost river when water was detected during digging of the dry river bed at
Yamunanagar. Surveys and satellite photographs confirm that there was once a great river that rose in the Himalayas, entered the plains of Haryana, flowed through the Thar-Cholistan desert of Rajasthan and eastern Sindh (running roughly parallel to the Indus) and then reached the sea in the Rann of Kutchh in Gujarat. The strange marshy landscape of the Rann of Kutchh is partly due to the fact that it was once the estuary of a great river. The government constituted
Haryana Sarasvati Heritage Development Board (HSHDB) had conducted a trial run on 30 July 2016 filling the river bed with of water which was pumped into a dug-up channel from tubewells at Uncha Chandna village in
Yamunanagar. The water is expected to fill the channel until
Kurukshetra, a distance of 40 kilometres. Once confirmed that there is no obstructions in the flow of the water, the government proposes to flow in another after a fortnight. At that time, there were also plans to build three dams on the river route to keep it flowing perennially. In 2021, the Chief Minister of the State of Haryana stated that over 70 organizations were involved with researching the Saraswati River's heritage, and that the river "is still flowing underground from Adi Badri and up to Kutch in Gujarat." The Saraswati revival project of Haryana seeks to build channels and dams along the route of the lost river in Haryana, and develop it as a tourist and pilgrimage circuit. Joint efforts by several states enroute, from the origin of its initial tributaries in Uttarakhand and Himachal, to its
paleodelta in Gujarat with ancient dock at
Lothal (one of the southernmost sites of the ancient
Indus-Saraswati Valley civilisation with trade links to
Mesopotamia and
Sumer), via Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, are on to
map and revive the flow till Gujarat and build religious tourism and irrigation-cum-flood control facilities along the way.
International Saraswati Festival, organised by the Haryana Saraswati Heritage Development Board (HSHDB), is an annual 5-day international-level festival held in the last week of January in honor of Sarasvati River as a manifestation of Hindu goddess Saraswati, during which the annual
pilgrimage along the Saraswati route is organised through various
ghats on religious
tirthas and
Indus Valley civilization sites. == See also ==